You’ll see all placements, including automatic targeting methods such as keywords, topics, remarketing, and audiences. You’ll also see any manual placements you chose.

What to look for:

Placements that have performed well and where your ads could show more often with an increased bid.

Poor-performing placements to exclude, based on how they compare with your other placements. Sometimes it may not be immediately clear why your ads appeared on a certain placement, but comparative performance is a good gauge of whether or not a placement should be excluded.

Note: Some of the URLs that you see may be incomplete. It could be that the URL is too long or that it contains private information about the person viewing the placement, like a username or password. When this happens the URL is shortened with an ellipsis and may be partly stripped, potentially taking you to a page that’s different from where your ad was shown.

Example

An outdoor company has a Yosemite Hikes campaign. They’ve been using managed placements and want to find additional sites to target by analyzing impressions (Impr.) and conversions. By visiting the Placements page, they can analyze those metrics.

Placement

Type

Campaign

Impr.

Conversions

half-dome-hikes.com

Site

Yosemite Hikes

1,500

20

adventure-hikes.com

Site

Yosemite Hikes

1,500

25

yosemite-power-drinks.com

Site

Yosemite Hikes

3,000

2

hikes-for-kids.com

Site

Yosemite Hikes

2,000

0

In the Where ads showed page, the website half-dome-hikes.com is performing well, so the account manager adds it as a managed placement to the campaign. On the other hand, the yosemite-power-drinks.com and hikes-for-kids.com automatic placements are performing poorly. These placements are also geared toward people outside their target audience, so the account manager excludes them.

What to look for:

Identify the targeting methods that get your ads on the most appropriate placements and in front of your intended audience.

Example

An account manager has been using broad topics like Hiking & Camping to target ads for his Yosemite Hikes campaign. However, the placements where these ads appear based on his topic targeting aren’t as relevant as he’d like. So, he decides to use the Audiences page to reach certain customers. From the Audiences page, he selects Targeting and uses an affinity audience for “Outdoor enthusiasts” and “Thrill seekers.”

What to look for:

Certain audiences that you want to reach with ad creative and targeting methods

Example

This Yosemite Hikes campaign advertises tours that are relevant to all age groups.

Age

Campaign

Clickthrough Rate

18-24

Yosemite Hikes

0.26%

25-34

Yosemite Hikes

0.20%

35-44

Yosemite Hikes

0.16%

45-54

Yosemite Hikes

0.16%

55-64

Yosemite Hikes

0.14%

Unknown

Yosemite Hikes

0.15%

The account manager notices a higher clickthrough rate amongst people in the 18 - 24 age group. Since people in this age group tend to click ads in this campaign more often than other age groups, he decides to revisit the ad creative and targeting to make it appealing to other age groups.

Note:

If you exclude people in the "unknown" category you may be excluding some of your target audience.

Custom performance data and charts

Under the reporting icon at the top of your screen you’ll find new ways to see and analyze your ad performance data.

There are three main reporting tools:

Reports allows you to create various charts or tables to see performance data. You can combine dozens of custom metrics, seeing granular detail on factors such as impressions, targeting, and conversions. These reports can be saved for future reference.

Dashboards are designed to let you access your most useful data in one place. You can drag and drop saved charts and tables you made using Reports into multiple panes on the dashboard, create new charts, create Scorecards to see quick performance data, and add notes.